Some Thoughts on Cosmo Thread

A new to me floss has been arriving in a couple of quilt shops that my mom goes to.  When she first asked if I knew anything about Cosmo floss, I had to say I hadn't.  What was more surprising to me is that I haven't seen any mention of it in any of the cross stitch blogs I read.  After poking around the web for a bit, I learned that Cosmo is manufactured in Japan by a company that also produces fabric aimed at the quilting market.  This seems to explain why it is being carried by quilt shops and not so much by needle working establishments.  I also noticed that Cosmo was mentioned more on quilting blogs.

After reading some of those blogs I decided to give Cosmo a try in cross stitch.  So I hunted through my patterns and finally settled on a freebie from Chantelaine called Kathy's Violets.  I then found a conversion chart from DMC to Cosmo, printed it up, and was good to go.

Saturday I went with Mom to American Quilting for the Second Saturday event.  (It's a block-of-the-month mystery quilt deal where you show last months block all put together and pick up the materials for this months block.)  Conversion sheet in hand I selected the colors I needed.  The solid skeins were selling for $1.10, and the variegated skeins are $1.70.  I got 20% off that, but I'm not sure why.  They weren't listed on the flyer of Second Saturday sale items.  But really, I'm not about to complain.

After running errands I cut out a piece of 28 ct. Waterlillies linen and went to work.  I'm stitching it twice, and will put it together biscornu style.

When I picked out that bright green pictured with the purples, I had my doubts about it.  And sure enough, it's supposed to be a medium purple color.  I found a second conversion chart which has a different color listed, and I think the other color will be a purple.  I'll be back to American Quilting to pick up the other color suggested for conversion and see if that makes more sense.

My first response when picking up a skein of floss was that these were soft.  I don't pick up a skein of DMC and think "it's so soft!"  When using the Cosmo, it pulled through the linen easier than DMC does, but not nearly as nicely as a silk does.  The coverage is good on the lighter colors, but I found the thread a bit thinner on the dark navy (which doesn't show up in the picture, so I'm pleased about that.)  The twist seems to be a little tighter, and I didn't get as much fraying on the tail as I normally get with DMC. I primarily used the loop method to start my stitches, so if there is a nap to the floss, I didn't notice it. (To be fair, I don't really notice if there is a nap to DMC or not... although when using the loop method to start, one tail does always seem to become more frayed than the other.)

Over all I'm quite please with the floss.  However, for me it's a bit cost prohibitive at $1.10 a skein when I can pick up DMC for $.39 a skein when it's not on sale.  I'd love to replace my DMC with Cosmo but as I said, it's a bit pricy to do that.  I think this will be a 'treat' floss.  Something I'll use for (more) special items.

As you can see above, I'm only stitching one quadrant of the pattern with the Cosmo.  I figured since I was doing a comparison, I may as well acquire some Anchor and Sullivan flosses.  I ordered those from 123 Stitch and will pick those up on Tuesday.  Once done I'll have a quarter done in Anchor, Cosmo, DMC, and Sullivan.  I've been trying to figure out how to label each quarter in a nice and tasteful way. ... Maybe I'll just go for gaudy on the square I decide to be the back of the biscornu.

So if you run across Cosmo floss, give it a go!  You just might like it.

Hugs and Stitches,
Kay